


Canciones

by cyanocorax



Category: The Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3138677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has one of those faces, he realizes—one that carries its youth with it wherever it goes. In the half-light her profile might as well be the one he saw in Barcelona, two decades missing, flare-lit, hungry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canciones

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this too long ago. contains awkwardly inserted quotations of poetry. thx vee for still loving me

 

_1._

His office is characteristically barren, and reminds her far too much of Madrid. She finds before her the pair of elephants at one end of the desk, the smiling, shriveled head at the other, and all around, the smell of tobacco and rain, each hint of Clarence erased, down to the stains in the woodwork and the thickness in the atmosphere. Randall, she remembers, has always possessed the mysterious ability to air out every space he occupies.

He catches her staring through the open door, looks up from straightening the books upon the shelf. Candide slithers from his palm to settle between a well-thumbed copy of Totem und Tabu and a volume of Lorca, pressed into the corner. She remembers the Freud as it appeared sitting upon their nightstand, her ashtray on the cover. Randall silently removing it with undisguised irritation written upon his face.

Now there is only neutrality—the cautious stare of no-man’s-land. She walks over to his desk, already broken into systems, segments, and places the write-ups upon the pile she knows they belong to.

“I’ll see you at the editorial conference.”

“Yes.” (He’s aged. She doesn’t know why this should surprise her. Surely they all have.)

“Are you—”

“Not now, Randall, terribly busy.” She is, of course. Terrible. And busy.

In the corridor she hears a sigh, the shuffle of rearranged books. It chases her all the way back to the office, beneath her tightly shut door, worms into the ribbon of her typewriter and the taste of her whiskey. Between clicks and between sips she can hear it grow, and take root.

 

_2._

Her office is characteristically cluttered, and reminds him far too much of Madrid. He picks out her old shots beneath newer cuttings, diagrams. The sobbing woman from ’39. “Hector, stupid man,” she’s saying, her hands pressed together, palm to palm, as if prepared to clap, or pray, or swipe themselves clean, “has gotten himself arrested.”

Randall feels his jaw tighten.

“Whatever happens,” he croaks, “the board mustn’t know.”

“Yes, we had thought of that, Randall.”

We. His hand extends and, carefully, nudges her telephone so that its edge lines up with that of the desk. He breathes a little easier. “I realize my arrival is something of an intrusion.”

Lix laughs, caustic and irreverent and bitter, like gunfire. “Just a bit.”

“But. I…” She folds her arms. Smiles. “Now that I’m here, I would appreciate a degree of trust.”

This is funny, on some deep, twisted level, because the very act of him being here, in this room, speaking to her, of all people, is a betrayal, a form of deceit. In the back of his mind there is already the seed of another conversation, germinating, taking root, but if only he could wait—

Lix is saying something about how he’s right, of course he’s right, it was ridiculous of them, running ‘round like guilty schoolchildren. “We’re all adults here,” she insists. Playacting, the way she always does. She has one of those faces, he realizes—one that carries its youth with it wherever it goes. In the half-light her profile might as well be the one he saw in Barcelona, two decades missing, flare-lit, hungry.

Lix has always done everything with elegance, be it smoking, or swearing, or running towards death.

She grins so that she shows him all her teeth, then bustles out the door.

 

_3._

A carton of cigarettes and a heap of displaced papers later, and she finds it, pressed between a letter from her sister, (dead), and a copy of The Daily Mirror from ’45, (crumbling). ‘VE-DAY! IT’S OVER IN THE WEST’.

She’s careful not to drop any ash on the envelope. It still smells the way it did, in Barcelona. A little like her old perfume, and a lot like ruin.

Briefly, very briefly, she considers looking inside.

 

_4._

“We should go down. They’ll be missing us.”

“Yes.”

She blinks. There’s still some sleep in her eyes. It makes him think of all the wrong things. “What instrument is she in for, does it say?”

“I, um. No, it doesn’t.”

A beat. A shrug. “Well, she certainly didn’t get it from me. Can’t carry a tune to save my life.”

“I remember.”

He’s yet to let go of her hand—or, she’s yet to let go of his. He would like to think of this as their version of forgiveness, rewritten, translated, transcribed a thousand times, a little ruined in the process. But, here.

They’ll muddle through.

 

_5._

He walks her home from the pub the way he used to, arm in arm, him still smelling of Earl Grey. She’s thrilled and unnerved by the newness of it all at once when she kisses him, missing in some old, damaged place the taste of fine scotch as passed from his mouth to hers.

“It’s been a while,” he mumbles, hands on her hips.

“Speak for yourself, darling.”

“I meant—”

She laughs, “I know, I know,” shows him into her flat, lets him be the one to shut the door, gives him space to retreat.

He kisses her again, on the bed, more forcefully. Fingers in her hair. Nineteen years and Randall still acts as if he doesn’t know quite what to do with her. She laughs again, can’t be bothered to hide it, tries to sit up and feels her spine resist. “We’re not as young as we used to be,” she announces, and undoes his tie, hands it over, lets him fold it, set it down.

They remember a little more of one another after that. Old rhythms. She holds his head in the place where her neck meets her shoulder, breathes against his cheek, shuts her eyes. If she forgets where she is, ignores the age in her bones—

The world narrows to a single fixed point of light. One moment she is arching, advancing, trying very hard not to push her nails into his back— the next he is gone, replaced by the dark and the sound of her sheets against his skin.

She draws near to him, certain she can already see the half-sheepish look on his face. Kisses him again to nudge it away. His fingers find her hair again, this time to order it, brush the strands away from her eyes. Another sort of rhythm.

Lix finds herself thinking of nineteen years, of Paris, of faceless men and women in nameless restaurants. His mouth on a stranger’s lips, his hips between a stranger’s thighs. It isn’t bothersome so much as it is unfamiliar, the idea that he should’ve gone on without her, separate and unbound. Does he ever pass a pretty girl in the street and think as she does, first the want and then the worry, something about the shape of her nose, the color of her hair?

Judging from the set of his jaw, similar trains of thought are rattling through his mind as well. “Should sleep,” she says.

He turns a little, to look at her. “ _Y en la tarde caída_ ,” he murmurs, lips pressed to her brow, so softly it all seems to blend with the rain outside her window, “ _quería ser mi voz_.”

“ _Ruiseñor._ ” Lix smiles, scoffs. “Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, Randall, but you must admit, it’s hardly fitting.”

He blinks. Kisses her hair. Says, “I beg to disagree.”

 

_6._

First, before anything else, he smokes a cigarette out the open window, fixes upon the skyline. London is an old friend, after all these years, Paris a bruise he still deigns to press every now and again, and Madrid: a door, reopened, re-shut.

The envelope sits on the table, where she left it.

He has spent nineteen years living a series of inventions, even—especially—during the war. She had a thousand names and always tended to look more like Lix than himself.

(Most recently, she was Sophia, and played the piano. And breathed.)

Now she is nothing. He does not think she would even have had a funeral worth speaking of.

He considers where he could have been at the time, and realizes it doesn’t matter.

The cigarette is put out, the window shut. Randall turns, to fix the mess he’s made.

 


End file.
